Two frequencies frame this jungle slot, and they are a long way apart. Free spins arrive roughly once in 220 spins, often enough that a handful of demo rounds will show you one. The 5,000x maximum that the same round has to build comes in at about one spin in 1,612,900. Both figures are published, which is rare for a 2022 ways game, and together they describe Gorilla Mayhem better than the badge on its splash does.
The blue gorilla is the top symbol, and its golden versions carry the only multipliers on the reels. They drop at random on reels 2, 3, 4, and 5, never on reel 1, and they stand in for the blue gorilla when they land. One head is x1, two heads x2, three heads x3, and the multiplier applies to every winning way that contains a gorilla.
That last clause does a lot of work. A leopard run four reels wide takes nothing from a golden gorilla beside it, so this game ties its biggest multipliers to its biggest symbol. Plenty of ways titles from this studio let a multiplier lift whatever it touches. Gorilla Mayhem keeps its gold working for one symbol only, and that decision shapes every screen you will see.
Three, four, or five scatters award 10, 15, or 20 free spins, and the round then counts gorillas instead of counting down. Every gorilla and golden gorilla that lands is collected, and every 40 heads moves the round up a level.
Level 2 takes the x1 golden gorillas out, so only x2 and x3 can hit, and reaching it awards 3 more free spins. Level 3 leaves x3 alone and awards another 3. After that, everything still to come is played at level 3, including a retrigger. Special reels are in play throughout, and a retrigger asks for only 2 scatters, which is worth 5 spins; 3, 4, or 5 scatters pay 10, 15, or 20 as usual.
The side button buys the round for 80x your stake and awards 3, 4, or 5 scatters at random, putting the starting number of free spins out of your hands. In free play, it is the quickest way to see how the progressive levels work. Unusually, the bought round uses the same return figure as standard play. Most Pragmatic Play bonus buys adjust the maths by at least a few hundredths, making Gorilla Mayhem a rare exception in the studio’s catalogue.
The wild stands in for every symbol except the teal scatter crystal, and it shares the golden gorilla’s limits, appearing only on reels 2 to 5. Reel 1 has to be filled by a paying symbol every time.
Around that is a canopy backdrop, a leopard, a crocodile, a hippo, a parrot, and a snake in woven vine frames, and card ranks cut from stone. It’s a clean set, and a familiar one if you have played through the site’s animal slots. The gorilla portrait in its gold frame is the one piece of art doing anything the rest of the board isn’t.
Because reel 1 holds no wilds and no golden gorillas, every gorilla win in Gorilla Mayhem has to start with the blue gorilla itself. From reel 2 onward, the golden versions fill in, and a run of gorilla, golden gorilla, golden gorilla across the first three reels pays as a three-symbol combination with whichever multiplier the gold carries.
The grid is 5 reels by 4 rows, so four rows of hippos on reels 1 to 4 is not one win but dozens of separate ways added together. That is what makes a 2.5x top hippo pay feel bigger on the board than it reads in the table.
The scatter crystal carries no reel restriction, landing across all five, so the trigger never depends on a fixed shape the way the multipliers do. Three start a round wherever they come down.
Bets step between $0.20 and $240, with no ante bet and no super spin mode to inflate the top of that range. The return is 96.50%, and it holds for the bought round as well as for standard play. Operators can run the game at 95.50% or 94.50% instead, so the figure shown in the rules of the version you open is the one that counts.
The game rates itself Medium. That fits the small tile wins and nothing else. The top-end payouts sit at High, and so does our rating. Round wins are limited to 5,000x bet, and a round that reaches that number ends there with the win paid.
The gorilla is the one symbol that starts paying from two matching, at 0.5x, and everything below it needs three. The leopard and crocodile share a row, so do the hippo and parrot, and the five card ranks bunch tightly between 0.2x and 1.5x. The crystal has no pay of its own and does nothing but open the round. Values below are multiples of your total stake, counted per winning way.
| Symbol | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gorilla | 0.5x | 1.5x | 3x | 4x |
| Leopard | 1x | 2x | 3x | |
| Crocodile | 1x | 2x | 3x | |
| Hippo | 0.8x | 1.5x | 2.5x | |
| Parrot | 0.8x | 1.5x | 2.5x | |
| Snake | 0.5x | 1x | 1.5x | |
| A | 0.5x | 1x | 1.5x | |
| K | 0.3x | 0.7x | 1.2x | |
| Q | 0.3x | 0.7x | 1.2x | |
| J | 0.2x | 0.5x | 1x | |
| 10 | 0.2x | 0.5x | 1x |
A 5,000x cap you are given the odds of, attached to a 4x top way and a feature that appears about once in 220 spins. The progressive levels are worth reaching, and the golden gorillas are narrower than they look on the splash. Solid Pragmatic Play ways play, short of memorable.
One in 1,612,900. That is the published chance of a spin ending at the cap, and almost no slot page will tell you the equivalent number for the game it reviews. Set it beside 1 in 220 for the free spins trigger, and the shape of the design is immediately clear.
The top way pays 4x for five gorillas. Getting from there to the cap takes ways stacking on ways, a level 3 round, and x3 gold on most of them. Standard play cannot do it, and the maths behind those two frequencies is the honest version of what the game is selling. Everything you will actually see happens in the space between them.
What fills that space is decent. The progressive levels are a real improvement on a fixed count of spins, because 40 collected heads is a target you can watch approach, and the two 3-spin awards mean a round that starts well keeps going. A 2-scatter retrigger is a soft ask, and soft is welcome when the alternative is 3 scatters on a 20-spin round. Special reels run through the round as well, though the rules stop short of saying what changes on them. Twenty spins from five scatters, 3 more for level 2, 3 more for level 3, and 5 for a two-scatter retrigger add up to 31 without anything rare happening, and that is a round worth sitting through.
The narrow multiplier is the cost of all that. Tying x1, x2, and x3 to combinations holding the gorilla means most winning screens take no multiplier, and a board can light up across four reels with nothing gold near the win. For a player who bought in at 80x, 220 spins of waiting is a long way from the version of the game the splash advertises.
As jungle ways slots from this studio go, it is solid rather than memorable. Buffalo King Megaways changes its ways count every spin and puts its multipliers in the feature where you can see them build; Gorilla Mayhem fixes the ways at 1,024, keeps its multipliers in standard play, and asks you to accept that they only ever help one symbol. The level system is the better idea. The board around it is the ordinary one.
